Journey to the Savage Planet Review (ApolloXIII_)
This game is alright. It's fine. It's a pretty basic fps metroidvania, although quite linear for a metroidvania, consisting not of a large map of interconnected zones but a few fully distinct areas with a few large zones each. The game has a lot of missteps and little irritations, like how certain gates or blocks require items that are both useful in combat and you have an extremely limited inventory of, which means that even if you have the upgrades and progression to get into a secret, if you happen not to have the key items you need to get in when you find it, you need to remember where it is in a game with no map, backtrack to an area with the resource you needed, grab the resource, then go back to the secret. It's highly irritating.
Enemy variety is middling to weak, weapon variety is nil (a pistol with an unlockable charge shot I barely used) and the bosses are all extremely mediocre. At least environment variety is pretty high. The areas are all pretty consistently interesting, unique, and/or pretty.
The upgrades you get are mostly meaningful, and the way that the grappling hook is implemented is great, especially if you figure out how to launch yourself with grapple cancelling. It does bug me that the high jump needs a basically post-game upgrade to actually be fun to use, but I digress.
This is a game with a lot of flaws, but a combination of good art, occasionally funny writing, and good core movement (at least once you have all the upgrades) was compelling enough to get me through getting all of the collectibles even once I'd beaten the final boss, as well as through the DLC. If I had bought this at full price, this review would almost certainly be negative, but on a deep discount, I'd say this game is worth trying if it looks interesting to you.